raise your rates

If you want to earn more as a freelancer, you need to sharpen your negotiation techniques. Seriously. When a prospective client makes you an offer, your ability to negotiate the scope of work and your fee can pay off off in two important ways.

First, negotiation techniques can help boost your cash flow. Second, and more significantly, negotiation techniques can help you establish a higher rate for each subsequent piece you write for a client.

Let me share an example with you that went particularly well.

I’d been wooing a potential content marketing client in one of my niche areas. We discussed a project on the phone for a while, and then the editor made me a low-ball offer of $300 per piece. Based on the time it would take me to deliver what we’d discussed, I knew I wouldn’t be able to do the work quickly enough for it to be worth my while.

I wanted to work with this client, so I countered the offer by using a couple of key negotiation techniques. The result: I managed to get a contract for $750 per piece — more than double the initial offer.

Want to know how I did it? Use these proven negotiation techniques to get paid more:

Last year, I got out my crystal ball and created a freelance writing forecast that identified 12 hot writing niches for the past year. (You can check and see how I did.)

That post was one of the most useful posts of the year, judging from the traffic it got, so I’ve decided to do a new forecast for 2017.

But this time, rather than good-paying types of writing, I’m calling out the hot trends you should know about to earn well in the coming year.

How you take advantage of these trends and freelance writing forecast will depend on the kinds of writing you like to do and types of clients you serve. These are top-level trends that will affect all of us, whether you’re into blogging, magazine writing, or copywriting.

I’ve included action items that explain how to take advantage of each of these trends in the coming year.

The freelance writing forecast looks bright

The short version: I’ve never been more excited about the opportunities for freelance writers than I am right now.

I quit my corporate job in February 2015 with $300 in the bank. I had no idea what I wanted to do besides make a living writing. I was 25 years old, and a total newbie in the writing world. There wasn’t a lot of demand for young writers, I thought.

The extent of my experience was winning a third-grade writing contest and getting a book published for my school library. I was motivated, but didn’t exactly have a plan or success mindset to build a profitable freelance business.

I didn’t have a degree, any experience, or, if I’m being completely honest, any idea how to get someone to pay me to write. Call it crazy. Call it youthful enthusiasm. Because it was.

I wanted to build a successful freelance writing business, but I wasn’t sure how to make it happen. Sound familiar?

After a rocky start, I realized that when you approach freelancing with a success mindset, it can have a big impact on growing your business and your income.

Fast forward two years, and I’m making over $100 an hour. And I’m constantly booked out two months in advance.

It was a big win for me, even though it wasn’t in my niche (because I hadn’t really figured out what my niche was yet). The client actually reached out to me after seeing some of my blog posts on Facebook.

But there was a problem. I had no idea what to charge, and the client wanted to know my rate.

I pored over everything I could find online, asked around, and finally settled on a rate of $50 per 500-750 word blog post. I sent the editor my rates, and voila – I had my first contract in place.

I jumped into writing awesome blog content for this client. But it didn’t take long to start second guessing my rate. Was I charging enough for this type of work? What were other writings charging for writing similar blog content? What would need to happen to raise my rates and keep this client?